Mordecai M. Kaplan and the Development of Reconstructionism

Deals with the unpublished papers and the ignored early period of Kaplan's life, before he published Judaism as a Civilization (1934) at the age of 53.

Reviews

". . . breaks new ground in that it is based heavily on unpublished sources and deals only with the early period. . . . Among [these sources] are some 10,000 letters which Libowitz has arranged and catalogued. . . . Libowitz's book is helpful in many ways and should be read by anyone who is interested in Kaplan." - Reconstructionist

"The first work on the development of Kaplan's thought which draws on Kaplan's voluminous diaries and papers, access to which has been restricted. . . . Libowitz's presentation is clear . . . [and] includes a fine set of pictures of Kaplan, his family, and his associates." - Religious Studies Review

"The merit of Libowitz's book is that it confirms through extensive quotation from Kaplan's twenty-five volumes of diaries (to which no scholar before Libowitz has had access) what the reader of Kaplan's works has long suspected [i.e., his perpetual aloneness and his single-mindedness in pursuing a solution to the Jewish problem of his day as he perceived it]." - Studies in Contemporary Jewry